1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an optical remote control arrangement for a projectile, having provided for the guidance of the projectile from a firing base to a target, a sighting arrangement adapted for the sighting of the target along a sighting line. At least one light source is located at the firing base which emits a lamellar shaped or finned light beam which upon traversing through at least one deflecting device periodically passes over a region containing the sighting line, wherein the light beam is directionally-dependently modulatable and detectable by at least one detector acting upon a demodulator and arranged on the projectile, by means of which control signals are generatable which act on the control devices of the projectile so as to exert an influence over the trajectory of the projectile.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
From German Pat. No. 14 81 990 there has become known an optical remote control arrangement for a projectile of the above-mentioned type. In a remote control arrangement of that kind no receiving or evaluating device is located at the firing base point for the waves which are reflected or transmitted from the projectile and, moreover, there are also not required any transmitting devices for a transmission of control signals to the projectile. Consequently, transmitting devices for the transmission of information to the firing base point are also not present in the projectile, so that there are reduced the overall requirements in comparison with other known devices. In the indicated German patent, a laser is utilized as the light source, whose electro-optically modulatable light is expanded lamellarly-shaped through anamorphatic installations, in particular, cylindrical lenses. Each of the lamellar-shaped light beams, by means of a pivoting mirror driven by a servomotor traverses a surface which contains the sighting line and the projectile. In accordance with the control of the servomotor is the light beam deflected in different directions. For the generation of a directionally-dependent modulatable light beam, these deflections of the light are synchronized with the frequency fluctuation of the modulated light beam so that each direction of a light beam corresponds to a predetermined value of the light modulation frequency. Within the projectile, connected to the light detectors are demodulators for the modulation given off for the lamellar-shaped light beam so that, due to the signals which are delivered by the demodulators, there are generated control signals which act upon the control arrangements.
In this known remote control arrangement it is disadvantageous that the optical modulation, deflection and focusing of the laser beam is only achieved through a considerable demand on optical components. For the control of the optical system of the firing base point, in this known German publication there is utilized a computation unit or, in effect, a programming unit. Arranged in the projectile as the complementary member is a detector and demodulating device which again acts on the guidance installation through a computer apparatus. Overall, the constructional requirement which is necessary, on the one hand, at the base station and, on the other hand, within the projectile, is considerable, so as to lead to high manufacturing costs. The utilization of that type of guidance installation for small projectiles is thus not possible.